Born in 1887 at Glendale, Truckee Meadows, Silas Earl Ross was the son of a pioneer rancher and farmer. Following his public schooling at Glendale and Reno, Mr. Ross entered the University of Nevada, where he received his degree in mining...

In 2011, the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) initiated a comprehensive study of the entire Fourth Street-Prater Way corridor, intending to improve not only public transportation in the area, but safety and livability. The conjunction of...

Gordon Alexander Sampson, a native of Canada, was born in 1888. He received his early education and training in the schools of Toronto. Following his formal education, he entered business first as a banker and later as a business analyst and...

Phyllis J. Walsh, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was born in 1897. She received her education in private schools of the New England area, and began an exciting and varied career that took her over several continents. While still in her...

Andrew D. Crofut is a Nevadan in the true sense. What does this mean? Crofut was born in 1889 and grew up on a ranch in Diamond Valley at the juncture of Eureka and Elko counties. The ranch provides the focus for a major portion of this memoir. The...

Paul A. Leonard was born in Fallon, Nevada, in 1911. The family moved to Reno in 1919, and Mr. Leonard received most of his education there in the public schools and at the University of Nevada. After graduating from the university in 1936, he...

During the second and third decades of the twentieth century, the Washoe occupants of Carson Valley began deserting homes on property owned by ranchers who employed them to congregate on land south of Gardnerville-the so-called colony of...

Truckee River (Calif. and Nev.) -- Water rights;
Carson River (Nev.) -- Water rights;
Carson River (Nev.) -- Water diversion;
Truckee River (Calif. and Nev.) -- Water diversion

Water and water rights have been major determinant factors in the development of Nevada. In Carson Valley, water rights have been indirectly a source of wealth and power as well as a cause of considerable friction among ranchers. Efforts to bring...

Americans of Basque ancestry figure prominently in the history of Nevada. Sheepherding and innkeeping are the activities most commonly associated with the state's Basques in the mind of the general public, but that is an excessively narrow...

Agnes Lander Schmith Heidtman retired from the University of Nevada, Reno on June 30, 2001, after fifty-three years of service to the university community. Many of her years of service were in the office of the president, so she has a unique...

Robert (Bob) L. McDonald, a native of Reno, Nevada, was born on South Virginia Street in 1920. His mother, Leola Lewis McDonald, and father, Joseph F. McDonald, Sr., were involved in the newspaper business. Leola McDonald wrote the society page,...

Edward A. Olsen, a native of New York, was born in 1919. He spent nearly his whole life in the West, as a youngster in Colorado, and as a newspaperman in Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada. Mr. Olsen was handicapped since birth by a serious physical...

For almost 150 years life in California's Sierra Valley has been substantially tied to family ranching enterprises, and to exploitation of the forests that rim the valley. When change occurred, it was generally evolutionary and driven by...

This is the story of Silver Peak, a small mining community in Esmeralda County, Nevada. As with many towns tied to mining, it has suffered the booms and busts that are inherent in the industry, but the difference with Silver Peak is that it has...

Frank W. Daykin, born October 28, 1920 in Cleveland, Ohio, found his way to Nevada after law school and solo practice, and ultimately reshaped the way Nevada legislative law is read. An only child of a doctor and a teacher, Daykin aspired to teach...

Charles W. Aplin arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1905, a young man of eighteen years. At that time, Las Vegas existed mainly as a tent city; the Los Angeles-San Pedro-Salt Lake Railroad had only recently established the site as a station on its...

Milton B. Badt, associate justice of the Nevada Supreme Court, was a member of a pioneer Nevada family. His father, Morris Badt, was one of the state's early merchants, arriving in Elko County in 1868. At Wells, in Elko County, the elder Badt...

Joseph F. McDonald has had an unusually rich and varied life, stretching over almost seventy years of Nevada's history. A native of Colorado, he was born in 1891, and his life initially revolved around lumber and mining camps. He came to Nevada in...

Louise Schmidt was born in Troy, Montana, on December 15, 1905; and at the age of six months she moved to Fallon, Nevada, with her parents, Alfred and Nellie Swesey, and her half brother, "Koot" Bronson. In 1910, after four years of homesteading in...